A time to remember all those who have served

In November 1942 -- 75 years ago -- five Sullivan brothers were serving on the same ship, the U.S.S. Juneau, in the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal. All five brothers perished. This was the greatest military loss by any American family during World War II.

In November 1942, my father and four of his brothers had all enlisted in various military branches. My father chose the Navy. He and his brothers all returned home to my grandmother and grandfather at the end of the war. My eldest uncle suffered both physical and psychological injuries during the war. He never fully recovered before he died and was laid to rest in the Liberty-Polk Cemetery alongside Marble Creek in the Ozarks over yonder.

A fifth brother, my youngest uncle, was too young to enlist during World War II. He served in the Army during the Korean War.

Today, my father and the rest of his brothers are buried in the same cemetery. Their headstones, as well as those of my grandparents and other Sullivans/Silivens whose kindredness is a bit of a puzzle, form a solemn row along one part of the cemetery, a burial ground that also includes at least one headstone for a veteran of the Revolutionary War.

In November 1942, a Fletcher-class destroyer was commissioned in a ceremony that included the mother of the five Sullivans -- from Waterloo, Iowa -- who died for their nation at Guadalcanal. My grandparents, as the parents of five sons in military service during WWII, were invited to the christening of the vessel. They did not attend. As they say in the hills, my grandfather didn't have a suit to be buried in. Translation: My grandparents had no resources, even for something as important as the naming of the new ship.

The ship went through several name changes before it was commissioned. Eventually the Navy settled on U.S.S. Sullivan, but President Roosevelt felt that name failed to emphasize the enormous loss of that particular family. He changed the name to the U.S.S. The Sullivans. In a way, my Sullivan clan has always felt the ship also honored the service of my father and his brothers, the ones from a spot in the road called Minimum.

The U.S.S. The Sullivans was involved in battle after battle during World War II and later served during the Korean War. It was decommissioned in 1965 and declared a National Historical Landmark in 1986. It was donated to the Memorial Buffalo and Erie County Naval and Military Park, where it serves today as a museum.

I suppose all Sullivans are related, one way or another. But I have no way of connecting my branch of the family to those five brothers who died at Guadalcanal. However, given the circumstances -- five brothers from one family, five from another, all in military service at the same time -- there has always been a link somehow that made us all one big family.

This Memorial Day, like all the others before it, we take a moment to remember the service and sacrifice of so many who have served in our nation's military branches. I suggest that many others, including the mother of the five Sullivans who died and the mother -- my grandmother -- of the five Sullivans who survived WWII action, also merit a special place of honor on this national holiday.

The Book of Common Prayer includes this collect, which takes on a particular importance as Memorial Day comes around:

Almighty God, we commend to your gracious care and keeping all the men and women of our armed forces at home and abroad. Defend them day by day with your heavenly grace; strengthen them in their trials and temptations; give them courage to face the perils which beset them; and grant them a sense of your abiding presence wherever they may be; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Joe Sullivan is the retired editor of the Southeast Missourian.